NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 25 March
25-03-2009
by Emmet Cole
Alienware on the edge | De Rossa gets riled
Alienware, an Athlone-based subsidiary of computer giant Dell, may be about to close, putting up to 70 jobs at risk, according to reports. Alienware manufactures gaming PCs and laptop computers and is said to be considering closing its manufacturing bases in Athlone and Miami. Alienware's products may now be made in Dell's new manufacturing facilities in Poland.
ComReg intends to release additional spectrum for FWALA licensing in the 3.6GHz to 3.8GHz part of the band, as well as releasing Channels E and J in the 3.5GHz band -- a total of 128MHz of spectrum in all. The news comes as ComReg published its response to consultation on the release of additional spectrum for fixed wireless (FWALA) broadband services for home and business consumers. This will increase the amount of spectrum available for FWALA broadband by almost 70 percent, according to ComReg.
Meanwhile, Dublin Labour MEP Proinsias De Rossa has called on ComReg to launch an immediate investigation into the cost of residential telephone line rental in Ireland. De Rossa was speaking in Strasbourg on Wednesday after an EU report revealed that the monthly cost of renting a residential phone line from Eircom stands at 66 percent above the EU average of EUR15. "ComReg must now launch an immediate investigation into the excessive cost of renting a residential line in Ireland. I fail to understand why Eircom's equivalent in Finland, a country much larger than us geographically with broadly the same population, can charge just EUR8 -- just one third the amount charged by Eircom. The European Commission may also yet have to intervene, as it has done with mobile phone and texting costs, in this matter," said De Rossa.
Irish games and movie industry software superstar Havok has launched a new product at the Game Developer Conference 2009 in San Francisco. Called Havok AI, it is designed to help games developers enable pathfinding and advanced character interaction when they're developing highly-dynamic game environments. Pathfinding is used to allow game characters to navigate through their landscape -- an increasingly tricky problem in today's complex and large-scale gaming environments.
The Irish mobile application and services company Zamano announced its final audited results for the 12 months ended 31 December 2008, on Wednesday. They show 68 percent revenue growth for the company since 2007 and estimated earnings (before interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation, goodwill impairment and IFRS 2 share-based payments) of just under EUR5 million. Adjusted earnings per share for the year were flat at EUR4.60. The company also had a net debt of EUR7.2 million at the end of 2008.
Employees are not complying with data storage policies, according to a survey conducted by data recovery firm Kroll Ontrack. The online survey found that 61 percent of respondents 'usually' save to a local drive instead of a company network. This is despite 40 percent of individuals surveyed stating that their company has a policy in place indicating where data should be stored. Kroll Ontrack claims that the risks associated with saving to a local drive can be minimised with an external back-up drive or back-up software. Meanwhile, 44 percent of respondents said that their preferred storage location was not backed up.
Fictionwise, the e-book retailer recently acquired by bricks-and-mortar bookseller Barnes & Noble, has announced the beta test release of its eReader application for BlackBerry devices. The application is already available on the iPhone and iPod Touch, where it's proving to be a popular download. The news follows reports that Sony is teaming up with Google to challenge Amazon's Kindle.
Researchers from the Chiba Cancer Center Research Institute (CCCRI), Chiba University in Japan and IBM are launching a World Community Grid project to discover a drug treatment for neuroblastoma, the most common cause of death in children with solid tumours. It is hoped that the grid will allow non-profit research institutions access to far greater computing resources than what they could otherwise afford and enable researchers across the globe to collaborate more effectively.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 